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Blair heard the rattle before he felt the ground begin to shake. He’d been through a few earthquakes before, so he knew what to expect, and this one didn’t feel like it was going to be too bad—certainly not catastrophic. But there had never really been anybody else to worry about other than himself and whoever he was with at the time during the other quakes, and this time, his first thought was for Jim.
Jim wasn’t there, however, and Blair had a duty to his students, some of whom probably had never experienced an earthquake.
He called, “Under your desks! It’s just an earthquake. We’ll be fine.”
The tremors seemed to go on forever as Blair crouched under the desk in front of the room. He was glad he was in one of the lecture halls with a sturdy metal desk for the instructor, and wooden desks in the lecture hall, so they all had shelter.
His mind was on Jim the whole time, though. Today was Jim’s PT day, but Blair couldn’t remember what time it was scheduled. Blair tried to remember what Jim had written down on the calendar, but his mind drew a blank. He was so preoccupied with trying to remember, Blair barely noticed the books from his desk crash to the floor, or the ceiling tile that fell.
The quake ended, and Blair said, “Don’t move just yet! Wait to see if there are aftershocks.”
His mind went right back to Jim, who might be at the rehab center, where he’d be with people who would look out for him. Or he might be at home, where they had neighbors who knew them, as well as enough food and water for at least a week due to Jim’s insistence on being prepared.
Anywhere else—the grocery store, the gym, somewhere in between, running errands—well, Blair could think of a hundred things that might go wrong.
And that was on a good day. Blair was pretty sure this didn’t qualify as a good day.
The aftershock came a few minutes later, although it wasn’t quite as violent as the initial quake had been. Blair knew it might not be over, so he said, “Another couple of minutes, okay? Let’s give everything time to settle.”
His mind went in endless circles as he thought of all the possibilities, and he wished he’d been able to convince Jim to get a cell phone. Blair knew that Jim had carried one when he’d been a detective, but Jim had said that he didn’t need to be that available to anybody anymore.
After this, Blair was going to insist that Jim get one, just for emergencies. If Blair told Jim that he might need to get in contact with Jim, maybe he’d go for it.
“Okay, everybody outside,” Blair announced when he thought it was safe to leave. He could see a few new cracks in the plaster walls, and a second ceiling tile had joined the first on the floor, but the damage looked more cosmetic than anything else. “If you live in the dorms, follow the emergency procedures your RA went over with you at the beginning of the year. If you live in an apartment building, be very cautious as you enter.”
“Dr. Sandburg, I don’t remember the emergency procedures,” Mindy said, her cheeks wet with tears.
If Blair remembered correctly, Mindy was from the Midwest, which meant she probably knew how to deal with tornadoes, but not earthquakes.
Blair put Jim out of his mind, realizing that he would have to shepherd his students through this mess. Maybe the earthquake hadn’t been that bad, but half of his class was clearly shaken. “Okay, that’s okay. I’m going to stick with you until I know you’re safe.”
Jim was a fully functioning adult, and he could take care of himself. These kids were young and some of them needed a little extra help. Jim would approve, he thought.
Wherever Jim was, Blair knew he’d be doing the same thing.
~~~~~
Jim often let Blair do the grocery shopping these days, or they went together. It was just easier that way, and Blair insisted that it was fair compensation for staying with Jim rent-free.
Maybe he hadn’t responded well to Blair’s attempts to help out at first, but Jim had eventually figured out that there was a difference between someone offering help out of pity, and offering because they cared.
And okay, it had probably taken him longer to figure it out than it should have, but Jim knew full well that he had a thick skull.
Still, he was in the mood to cook tonight, and he wanted lasagna, and they needed some supplies, which meant a trip to the store.
His physical therapy session had gone fairly well, although Louise was mainly helping him work on endurance, and keeping his core muscles strong. Jim had accepted that he wasn’t going to walk again, not without a lot of difficulty.
And Jim had mostly made peace with the chair; he’d even begun to have a grudging affection for it. Blair joked on occasion that maybe he should give it a name, although Jim wouldn’t go that far.
It was just enough to feel as though he had some control over his environment again, and with Blair’s help, Jim felt secure that he wasn’t going to zone or spike except on a very rare occasion.
Chair or no chair, Jim felt like his life was finally his again.
He was reaching for a can of tomatoes when he saw them begin to shake, and he felt the tremor at the same time. Out of sheer reflex, Jim rolled back to avoid the falling cans and held on, knowing there wasn’t anything he could do other than ride it out.
Jim had been through a few earthquakes in the past, and he judged this one to be between a 5 or 6 on the Richter scale—bad enough, and it was sure to cause damage, but it could have been a lot worse.
The ground finally stopped moving, and Jim put his basket on the floor. Lasagna was off the table today; right now, he had to do what he could to help.
Jim dodged fallen cans, making his way to the end of the aisle. He’d been in the health food section, because Blair insisted that organic tomatoes were better for him and his Sentinel sensibilities, and there were a lot of things that Jim just didn’t bother arguing about, not after Blair’s techniques had proven useful again and again.
But there wasn’t anybody else in that section, and Jim rolled down the aisle quickly, assessing the damage with a practiced eye. There were a couple of fluorescent lights hanging down from the ceiling, a couple of shelves had been knocked over, and there were a lot of items scattered on the floor, but Jim didn’t see any major structural damage.
He followed the sound of a crying child, spotting the boy first, halfway down the canned goods aisle. The kid looked to be about three of four, and he sat amid scattered cans, next to the sprawled figure of a young woman who was beginning to stir. Jim could see a thin line of blood trickling down from her hairline, and it didn’t take a detective to figure out that she’d probably been hit in the head by a falling can.
Jim didn’t think it was a good idea to get out of the chair, so he wheeled as close as he could. “It’s okay,” he crooned to the boy. “I’m going to help your mom. Ma’am? Are you okay?”
She groans. “My head.”
“It looks like you got clipped pretty good,” Jim agreed. “Can you sit up and let me see?”
Her eyes widened as she caught sight of Jim’s chair. “Are you okay?”
Jim smiled. “I didn’t get hit by a falling can.”
She managed to sit up, and the little boy immediately crawled into her lap. Jim looked at her for permission before tipping her chin up to get a better look. “It doesn’t look too serious. I don’t think it will need stitches, but you should get checked out by a doctor.”
“Thank you,” she said, rocking the child.
Jim felt another tremble, and he said sharply, “Get back. There’s an aftershock.”
They moved to the middle of the aisle, and the woman sheltered the boy with her body, although nothing fell this time. The aftershock wasn’t nearly as bad as the original quake, and most of the cans near the edge of the shelves had been knocked to the floor already.
“All right, you should get outside,” Jim said once he was sure it was over.
She frowned. “Aren’t you coming?”
“I’m going to make sure there aren’t more people with injuries,” Jim replied. “I’ll be fine.”
She still looked worried, and Jim hid a sigh. He’d lost track of the number of people who saw the chair and thought he needed help even when he didn’t, even when he didn’t ask for it.
“Take care of your son,” Jim insisted gently, and she finally went, glancing over her shoulder once before disappearing behind a display of chips.
A couple of aisles over, an elderly man was sitting on the floor, his cane lying next to him. His breathing was rapid and harsh, and Jim again got as close as he could. “Sir? Can I help you?”
The man shook his head, his bald head shiny under the remaining lights. “I just need to catch my breath.”
“I’ll stay with you until you do,” Jim promised. “Just take a deep breath, sir.”
“What’s your name, son?” he asked, glancing up at Jim with dark eyes made slightly cloudy by cataracts.
“Jim,” he replied. “Jim Ellison.”
“Dale Harrington.” He gave Jim a rueful smile. “Promise you won’t tell my daughter about this, Jim. She’s just looking for an excuse to make me move in with her.”
Jim grinned. “My lips are sealed.”
“Shook me up some,” Dale admitted. “But I just need to take a minute. What do you do for a living?”
“I used to be a cop,” Jim admitted. “Right now, I’m going back to school to be a lawyer.”
Dale nodded. “Good for you. Life throws you a curveball, you just have to take a swing at it, and then keep on swinging.”
“That’s the truth,” Jim agreed.
Dale nodded. “Can you give me a hand up?”
Jim appreciated the way Dale asked the question, like he’d accept Jim’s answer either way, and wouldn’t think less of him if he couldn’t assist. Jim set the brakes on his chair and offered a hand, helping Dale pull himself up to his feet.
“Thank you, Jim,” Dale said. “I assume you’re going to keep looking for people.”
“I think I probably should,” Jim replied, reaching down to grab Dale’s cane for him.
Dale nodded. “Take care of yourself.”
“Will do,” Jim promised, and then he started down the next aisle, wanting to make sure there weren’t other people who needed him.
It wasn’t until later, once he’d made sure the store was cleared, that he realized he’d never once stopped to think about whether he could help. He’d just acted out of instinct.
Turned out, Blair was right about that, too.
~~~~~
Getting his students taken care of was simple enough, since his Anthro 101 course was mostly populated by freshmen and sophomores who were living in campus housing. He walked each of them back to their dorms and made contact with at least one of the RAs in the building to ensure they would make certain their residents were okay.
One of the dorms had a gas leak as a result of the earthquake, and since that happened to be Mindy’s dorm, Blair stuck around to make sure she and the other residents had a place to go.
The sun was setting by the time Blair finally made it to his car, and he hoped Jim wasn’t too worried.
He just hoped Jim was okay.
From what Blair had seen, there wasn’t much structural damage to the buildings, just a lot of pictures knocked off the walls or shelves. That made him feel better, although if Jim was in the loft, and the elevator went out, he’d be stuck until building management got it working again.
Thankfully, he didn’t run into much traffic on the way back to the loft. Blair knew that the quake could have been a lot worse, and he was grateful it had been relatively mild.
Blair had to park a few blocks away from their building, and he jogged up to it, unable to contain his anxiety. He knew Jim was probably okay—Jim was fully capable of taking care of himself, and the quake hadn’t been that bad—but still.
This was Jim, and what Blair felt for him was overwhelming most of the time—messy and impossible, and probably unwelcome—but it was still there.
When Blair got into the building, he was glad to see that the elevator was in working order, which meant the building itself was probably fine. He opened the door, and smelled something cooking—a rich, warm scent that Blair recognized as Jim’s famous tomato sauce.
Relief hit him like a punch to the gut, and Blair let out a sigh.
“Blair?” Jim called, wheeling himself out of his room, clearly in one piece. “You okay?”
“Fine,” Blair managed, glancing around. He could see a few missing knickknacks and picture frames, so Jim had apparently already cleaned up anything broken. “You’re getting a cell phone.”
Jim raised an eyebrow. “Oh, am I?”
“I have one, and you are definitely getting one, because I don’t want to spend hours worrying about you if I don’t have to,” Blair said firmly.
Jim smiled. “You shouldn’t have worried.”
“You’re—” Blair stopped, wanting to say that Jim was his best friend, so of course he was going to worry, but that didn’t quite cover it, and he didn’t want to lie. He didn’t want to risk ruining what they had, but he didn’t want to lie either. “It could have been bad.”
The smile on Jim’s face faded, but his expression was soft. “C’mere, Sandburg.”
Blair approached cautiously, not quite sure what Jim was going to do. He’d never seen that expression on Jim’s face before. “Where were you?”
“Grocery store,” Jim said briefly. “I was thinking lasagna, but we’ll have to make do with spaghetti.”
“Sounds good, man,” Blair admitted. “I’ve been shepherding students around all afternoon. It was like herding cats.”
Jim chuckled. “Is that right? This is what I have to look forward to.”
“Law students are at least a few years older,” Blair protested, and he was right next to Jim now, looking down into bright blue eyes. “I think you’ll be fine. You’ll be wowing them with your dazzling intellect in no time.”
Jim reached for his hand. “You didn’t have to worry about me, you know.”
And Blair knew that Jim was referring to the chair, and his desire to be viewed as a whole person, fully capable of taking on anything that came at him. “Weren’t you worried about me?” Blair countered.
Jim hesitated, and then admitted, “Honestly, I was too focused on making sure everybody in the store was okay to worry about anything else, but I knew you’d be fine. Hargrove is a solid building, and you’re resourceful.”
Blair smiled. “How many people did you help?”
Jim shrugged. “Not that many.”
Blair knew him well enough to know that meant “as many as I could,” and he said, “Funny you should say that, because the entire time I was with my students, I kept thinking that you’d be doing the same thing, and I shouldn’t worry.”
He wasn’t sure whether he expected it or not, but Jim reached for him, his fingers gripping the front of Blair’s shirt, and Blair bent down easily, because he thought they might have been headed this way for a long time.
Jim’s kiss was tentative, undemanding, as though asking a question, and Blair turned up the heat, offering his own answer, relief and love and lust all vying for equal place.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Jim said after a few minutes, breathing a little harder than usual.
Blair touched Jim’s cheek. “Me neither. We can figure it out together.”
“Sounds good to me, Chief,” Jim said quietly. “But maybe after dinner?”
And Blair grinned. “Sounds like a plan.”